by Hadassah Ryan

Created on: March 25, 2009

From very young, many girls dream about the babies they might someday have. Even with the social advancements of the last fifty to one hundred years, many women still feel that strong biological urge to hold a sweet-smelling child of their very own. Hardly ever does this dream involve giving birth to a baby with birth defects.

I was eighteen weeks pregnant with my first long-awaited child when I went for my initial ultrasound. It was terribly exciting to finally see the form of this baby, the slight flutterings I had just begun to feel. We proudly took a small black and white picture home and gazed at it often, lost in the wonder and exhilaration of first time parenthood.

The wonder and exhilaration turned to alarm and dread a mere week later when we were contacted with the official results of the ultrasound. Something was wrong with our son.

And so began a battery of bi-weekly ultrasounds to check on the development of our baby. Appointments with specialists: obstetricians, geneticists and counsellors began to litter our calendar. These months of mid-pregnancy that should have been a time to paint nursery walls and shop for adorable clothing was now filled with constant fear and worry.

Unfortunately, doctors could not tell us anything definitive. They suggested this and that, hummed and hawed and speculated. It could be nothing. It may be a minor birth defect. It might be a serious, fatal disorder. We wouldn't know anything for sure until our boy was pushed out into the real world.

It's a perverse reality that many people, when faced with a discussion about an unborn baby's possible problems, tend to dredge up the most horrible stories. I heard about numerous traumatic miscarriages, terrible, limb deforming birth defects, the horrors of spina bifida and many other common syndromes and deformities. I could never bring myself to ask such people if they really thought I wanted to hear about these things.

On the other hand, I can recount numerous blessings through this time of my life. I had been planning to homebirth. The discovery of our son's birth defects put a definitive end to that dream. I shudder to think what might have befallen us, had we gone ahead with that plan and brought our baby into the world without the specialized treatment he immediately needed.

The fact that we were made aware of his birth defects at such an early stage of pregnancy gave me plenty of time to come to grips with the fact that my labour, birth and first moments of motherhood were

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>